


Hiatus

by Ezzy



Category: Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezzy/pseuds/Ezzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months can be a long time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiatus

Six months can be a long time. 

That was Annabeth’s first thought when the big announcement came out. Six months is a long time to wait to defeat Gaia, to put a plan in to place and to rescue Percy. Because that’s what they needed to do. She recognises that most of camp sees him as a Hero – capital letter required – and therefore someone who does the rescuing, not the other way round. But she knows Percy - really knows him - enough so that she sees the awkward teenager before the legend, and when she thinks about the open smile, and the bashful shrug, and the mysterious and dangerous other camp, it’s like something’s restricting her airway. 

Jason is not like Percy, no matter what Hera thinks. He’s colder, more aloof, a distant leader, rather than one who sits around the campfire eating smorgs and singing stupid songs like the rest of camp. The idea that Percy could come back like that, hardened and uncaring, physically hurts. And maybe she’s being unfair to the son of Jupiter – she doesn’t know him as well as she does Percy, and frankly isn’t making an effort to – but she can’t imagine him with a goofy grin or being teased, or doing anything Annabeth would consider endearing. 

She doesn’t take it too kindly when she hears someone whisper that Piper and Jason are the new her and Percy. She has nothing against either of them, but she doesn’t think an imaginary relationship only remembered by one of them and one quest can quite compete to what she and Percy went through, that led them to what they have. Had. No, have, she can’t think like that. Because how can there be a new her and Percy when they’re not gone, just on a one-sided hiatus due to divine intervention. They don’t need replacing. They can’t be. 

She tries to justify the wait to herself; it’s not like they haven’t been separated for longer. She once went an entire year without him. But that was when they were young, when they were tentative friends at best and had only spent one summer together. They’d spent long periods without seeing each other. But they always communicated somehow, through texts occasionally, if they were feeling lucky, and letters more regularly. People, usually her step-mum and the Aphrodite girls, would often gush about how romantic it was, even before they got together, and she would always snort and tell them that if they read the letters they wouldn’t think that. But she never let them read them, and she kept every last one.

Six months was a long time, and it was going to feel like it, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it, except continue to breathe down the Hephaestus cabin’s necks, and rely on the fact that even if she wasn’t there to save Percy, the whole invulnerability curse thing would. And love him, like she always had, even though he wasn’t there, and didn’t even remember her. Because when you know the gods are real, you don’t need to have faith in them, and that at least did leave you open to have faith in other things.


End file.
